China frees Peter Humphrey from jail 'on health grounds'

Former Reuters correspondent Patti Waldmeir, reporting from the city for the Financial Times, quoted sources close to the Briton.

Humphrey was with Reuters in the 1980s and 1990s. He later became a corporate investigator and was detained in 2013 in connection with the GlaxoSmithKline Chinese corruption scandal. A court reduced his 30-month sentence by seven months and he will be deported on release from hospital, one source told Waldmeir.

Humphrey was seized with Yu Yingzeng, his American wife and business partner in risk consultancy ChinaWhys, who was sentenced to two years in prison last August. She is due for release on 11 July and will be allowed to stay in China, where prison sentences are calculated from the date of initial detention.

Humphrey and his wife were detained for more than a year before their sentencing. He was charged under a 2009 law against obtaining personal information in China, an offence which carries a three-year maximum sentence.

The fate of the couple, who were denied a fully public trial and, at some points, full access to lawyers, has shone a spotlight on the risks facing foreign business people in China, Waldmeir reported.

The couple were detained after helping GSK, which was not mentioned during the trial, identify the source of a secretly filmed sex tape of its then top executive in China in bed with his girlfriend.

GSK was fined last year for funnelling billions of renminbi to hospitals, doctors and officials in an attempt to boost sales in one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing drug markets. ■